... and step aside, please. Your passion, death & resurrection are on hold until further notice. As a matter of fact, these old stories are hardly top priorities in the Church any more. Holy Thursday or not, the Pope has more important things to talk about.

ROME — Striking the tone that once earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler,” Pope Benedict XVI in a stern Holy Thursday homily denounced “disobedience” in the Roman Catholic Church, chastising priests who sought the ordination of women and the abolition of priestly celibacy.

Pope Benedict XVI's message on Thursday was one of the strongest — and most direct — speeches of a seven-year-old reign.

Referring to recent efforts by clerics in Austria and elsewhere, Benedict said that although such priests claim to act out of “concern for the church,” they are driven by their “own preferences and ideas,” and should instead turn toward a “radicalism of obedience” — a phrase that perfectly captures the essence of the theologian pope’s thought.

While there was nothing new in the contents of Benedict’s message, it was one of the strongest — and most direct — speeches of a seven-year-old reign that has more often been dominated by a sexual abuse scandal, repeated tangles with other faiths and a Vatican hierarchy in disarray. It also showed Benedict, who at almost 85 has been showing his age, in fighting form as a defender of orthodoxy, favoring a smaller church of more ardent believers over a larger community that relies on what he sees as diluted doctrine.

The pope, who once led the church’s doctrinal office, delivered his homily from a golden throne in St. Peter’s Basilica on the day priests recall the vows they made when ordained. He was clearly referring to an Austrian group called Preachers’ Initiative, which has issued a “Call to Disobedience,” asking the church to allow the ordination of women, to remove the obligation of priestly celibacy and to permit priests to give holy communion to divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment.

The initiative was started in 2006 by the Rev. Helmut Schüller, the former director of a Catholic aid agency, Caritas Austria, to combat a shortage of priests. Since then, more than 400 Austrian priests have endorsed him, according to news media reports, as well as priests in the United States and across Europe.

The Vatican fears that the initiative could cause a schism in the church. Father Schüller has called the Vatican an “absolutist monarchy” and said that the church’s resistance to change might lead to rupture anyway.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Father Schüller said he was surprised by Benedict’s words. “But I don’t think they were very harsh,” he said. “There was no threat or sanction implied in his words.

“I think that in the history of the church, a lot has changed, even if not always voluntarily,” Father Schüller said. “There has been new science, new technology, new practices. The teachings are always changing.”

Allowing women or married men to enter the priesthood “is not a question of faith, but one of tradition,” Father Schüller added. “It is not a matter of theology, but of history and tradition. And those are constantly evolving.”

In his homily, Benedict made clear that reforms could not go against church doctrine. He singled out “a group of priests from a European country” who had recently “issued a summons to disobedience.”

They did this to the point of disregarding church teaching and encouraging “women’s ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the church has received no authority from the Lord,” Benedict said.

In 1994, John Paul issued an apostolic letter saying that the church “has no authority whatsoever” to ordain women, citing among its reasons that the apostles of Jesus Christ were all men.

“We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the church,” Benedict said, “that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the church up to date. But is disobedience really a way to do this?”

Striking a characteristically inquisitive yet uncompromising stance, he asked whether such moves were aimed at “true renewal,” or “do we merely sense a desperate push to do something to change the church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?” Instead, the pope said, Christ’s concern “was for true obedience, as opposed to human caprice.”

Benedict said priests should look to renewal in a “radicalism of obedience,” and turn to the saints, not modern convention, for guidance.

Vatican watchers said the pope’s remarks pointed to a growing battle in the Catholic world. “In spite of the tough response of the pope, I think that the calls for reform won’t diminish; they will only grow,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert at the daily newspaper Il Foglio. “It’s a problem that the Vatican will increasingly have to come to terms with.

Somehow, I think his words pushing "radical obedience" are gonna fall mostly on ears that have seen what "radical obedience" really has meant in the church of recent years. That Radical Obedience has cost the church billions in money, tens of thousands of lives destroyed by abuse, and an almost complete reversal from the direction of Vatican II.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is all about me trying to remake the church in my own image and preference. Funny though, I kinda thought accountability, compassion and the like were things Jesus talked about too. So I suppose what he's really saying is that he wants obedience to what the Vatican says: we can ignore the Gospels when convenient for the Vatican...

Somehow, I think his words pushing "radical obedience" are gonna fall mostly on ears that have seen what "radical obedience" really has meant in the church of recent years. That Radical Obedience has cost the church billions in money, tens of thousands of lives destroyed by abuse, and an almost complete reversal from the direction of Vatican II.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is all about me trying to remake the church in my own image and preference. Funny though, I kinda thought accountability, compassion and the like were things Jesus talked about too. So I suppose what he's really saying is that he wants obedience to what the Vatican says: we can ignore the Gospels when convenient for the Vatican...

Methinks this one will be a tough sell, to say the least...

Cost of keeping a pedophile in jail for a year -- a few tens of thousands of dollars

Cost of a settlement to a victim -- hundreds of thousands, maybe a million dollars

Speaking of passion, death and resurrection, does anyone have any thoughts on why the Resurrection is ongoing?

Quanda

Not completely sure I know what you mean by your question.

It seems to me that in Church teachings, the Resurrection is to be taken as a historical event. In that sense, it happened once, and only needed to happen once. I dare say that this has been something of a departure point for some Christian sects over the years.

I think the church also talks about an ongoing Resurrection in the sense that it's seen as a process. Tielhard de Chardin spoke of an evolution of all of creation, wherein creation is called to a Point Omega (if memory serves) wherein all of creation would be called back to God, and become one with God, in perfection. That upward spiral (if you will) was, in his mind (I think) sort of an evolutionary Resurrection: a process wherein God constantly calls and draws Creation to itself (God.) (Of course, Tielhard was on and off the banned list so many times I still don't know where he stands now, many years after his death...)

Is this the kind of thing you were after? (Sorry, I'm being a bit dense today... getting ready to leave for a meeting... maybe I'll be more focused this afternoon...)

Cost of keeping a pedophile in jail for a year -- a few tens of thousands of dollars

Cost of a settlement to a victim -- hundreds of thousands, maybe a million dollars

Cost of radical obedience -- PRICELESS!!!

NJ

Literally made me laugh out loud. Thank you.

All

It may help us to frame Benedict's words with the concept that Holy Thursday liturgies have long been about the priesthood. So I'm guessing he was trying to place this in the context of a "priest to priest" kind of message, rather than priest to laity. Of course, when you're pope, it's gonna be interpreted to include everybody.

Still in all, I think Benedict and his recent successors have some serious explaining to do as they continue to effectively sit on their hands, while the numbers in the priesthood plummet. By their own prior admissions, celibacy is not a requirement, but a discipline. So for him to now include that under "radical obedience" tells me that his is really serious in his march to Trent, no matter WHAT the cost of his personal preferences may be on the church. (Besides, he can do this since he won't live long enough to see the real effects of his continuation of the policy.

Again, for me, radical obedience makes a lot more sense when those to be obeyed act in an hosnest, open, and appealing manner. It's quite another to demand radical obedience to guys with the kinds of tract records we've seen in the episcopacy since Vatican II. As much as Benedict and his supporters may want to try to separate the man from the office, the simple truth is that humans are not built that way. We follow leaders because of the leaders themselves. We follow offices only when we have to. So you don't consider the IRS to be a "leader," but you pay your taxes because you have to. But you might follow someone leading a radical movement because you believe in what the person says, AND you believe this person is a good person to follow. But I'm not sure folks will always line up behind a guy who might be peddling a good idea, but who is himself, not at all appealing.